WIDELY TUNABLE, SINGLE-MODE, HIGH-POWER QUANTUM CASCADE LASERS

We demonstrate widely tunable high power distributed feedback quantum cascade laser array chips that span 190 nm and 200 nm from 4.4 um to 4.59 um and 4.5 um to 4.7 um respectively. The lasers emit single mode with a very narrow linewidth and side mode suppression ratio of 25 dB. Under pulsed operation power outputs up to 1.85 W was obtained from arrays with 3 mm cavity length and up to 0.95 W from arrays with 2 mm cavity length at room temperature. Continuous wave operation was also observed from both chips with 2 mm and 3 mm long cavity arrays up to 150 mW. The cleaved size of the array chip with 3 mm long cavities was around 4 mm x 5 mm and does not require sensitive external optical components to achieve wide tunability. With their small size and high portability, monolithically integrated DFB QCL Arrays are prominent candidates of widely tunable, compact, efficient and high power sources of mid-infrared radiation for gas sensing.